Originally Posted by
79pmooney
So I've now seen a photo of unobtanium. Thank you!
And general question re" Mafac: When did they go out of business? And why? They made a product that was timeless and and was designed to be cheap to make with tooling that I'd think lasted for years or decades before needing replacement. (Simple forged parts with minimal machining and polish.) Bike shops didn't like the too many ranges of freedom and set-up challenges?
I believe that it was early 1983 when Mafac went out of business, but there always seems to be a few months difference between the stop of production and the final paperwork. There was some talk of a buyer, but nothing came of it. The entire French component industry was under pressure from both the Japanese competition and Campagnolo who offered complete groups of components. The individual component makers were increasingly shut out. It took a few more years, but the same thing took out SunTour, whose groups were really an assembly of components from different manufacturers ( like Spidel).